Monday, June 16, 2014

The Canoga Park First Wednesday of the Month Women’s Club started its summer-long 100th anniversary program on Sunday night with a boisterous celebration that merrily rolled along past midnight and was experienced by neighbors far and wide.

While the festivities last night were not an official Canoga Park First Wednesday of the Month Women’s Club event - the clubhouse facilities were rented out for a private affair - it did mark the first of a series of events falling under the umbrella of the club’s fabulous one hundredth anniversary celebration that is scheduled to culminate on October 18th with the Women's Club Centennial Party.

“Celebrating our organization’s one-hundred year existence is a program of events we’ve titled Fellowship Unifies Community and Komplements the Neighborhood - or FUCK the Neighborhood for short,” says Doreen Farber, the Women’s Club’s Vice President in Charge of Neighborhood Cacophony. “While it may be a little bit of a stretch for an acronym, and, yes, we had to fudge the spelling of that last word, it certainly conveys the message we want to send to everyone who lives in the area surrounding our clubhouse,” she chuckles.

“We were a little concerned about the language, but then we realized that it’s mild compared to what the club’s neighbors hear from the parking lot most Saturday nights during the parties or Sunday mornings when the AA meeting lets out - at least according to the messages we routinely get and ignore,” adds Bessie Betelmeyer, Chairperson In Charge Of Rolling Her Eyes While Deleting Complaints On The Answering Machine Without Responding To Them.

But to those who do complain, Betelmeyer, a Porter Ranch resident, has a message: “My my my, I do wish they’d take to heart the idea behind our centennial celebration. Like Doreen said: Fellowship Unifies Community and Komplements the Neighborhood. Or do I have to spell it out for your readers? I can do it with one finger, dearie.”

"Anything goes" is the only hard and fast rule during The Canoga Park First Wednesday
of The Month Women's Club 100th Anniversary Summer of Events. Staff photo.

Sunday’s inaugural hoop-de-do kicked off shortly after seven p.m. Per usual procedure at the club, as parents inside became increasingly drunk and, if possible, further disinterested in the welfare of their children, more and more peppy young ’uns streamed into the parking lot to yell and scream, blast air horns and set off car alarms in a joyfully unsupervised free-for-all evening of noise and freeze tag.

“Oh, my, yes, children can be quite a handful, as I recall,” laughs Farber and then clears her throat to continue in a more serious tone. “They’re not allowed in the gated community where I live.”

Once the music stopped at 12:15 a.m. and partygoers stumbled to their vehicles to brave the telephone pole and parked car obstacle course leading back home, the surprisingly numerous remaining crew began to clean the premises - a process involving bags filled with hundreds of empty bottles and cans being carried back and forth through the lot and then back and forth again and again, more children screaming, and, despite a parking lot that can accommodate no more than 30 cars, approximately 750-900 car door slams.

Doreen Farber. Photo: Fred Farber.

Hell hath no fury like the unidentified woman scorned in the parking lot at 1:35 a.m., according to neighbor Téodor Pasternak.

“Yeah, someone pissed her off but good. She was going off on some poor schmuck. ‘Eff this’ and ‘Eff that’ and ‘Eff you, I’m sick of your effing sh_t.’ Just ask anyone in the neighborhood who was trying to sleep on a Sunday night because they have to get up Monday morning and go to work,” says the haggard-looking area resident.

When asked about the lush’s screeching, profanity-laced tirade, Doreen Farber admitted she knew nothing about it.

“Good heavens - 1:30 in the morning? Oh, no, no, no - I was in bed before the ten o’clock news was over. Besides, I don’t live anywhere near Canoga Park. Now how the dickens would I know what goes on at our clubhouse?!”

The event finally drew to a close at exactly 2:15 this morning, when, following two hours of post-party cleanup noise, drunken, overloud conversation, arguing, laughter and yelling, children running and screaming, tire squealing and the occasional smash of a beer bottle being triumphantly hurled to the ground, the last car rattled over the metal track at the lot’s perimeter, followed by the gate being clanged shut.

Neighbors indicate they’re excited to learn what the Canoga Park First Wednesday of the Month Women’s Club has in store for them for the rest of the summer.

The Canoga Park First-Wednesday-of-the-Month Women’s Club is located at 7401 Jordan Avenue and is available for rental for, really, whatever you have in mind. The club was founded in 1914 by L.C. Kimball, who recently was reported to have rolled over in her grave.